Prof. Roberts:

The Adjacent TamilCountry(TamilNadu) says they use Nationalism as a Political tool.

Politics is for power and politicians need power.

So, when the tamil minority from Sri Lanka is fighting for power. How do you say this will be the end of that demand. Because, even after this, politicians need something to accuse and need to be victims. That will be the game.

People have a different set of needs. Their needs are to live a life and opportunity to look forward to.

Some comments on this and some of Mr Roberts earlier commentary.

Suicidal behaviour in conflicts is quite widespread and found in all times. The Japanese, Germans and Russians all employed the tactic in WWII when things were desperate. In the Indian context, the LTTE is not the only case either. The Jauhar which Rapjuts would resort to when there was no hope is another - and this is from North India. Iranians, Arabs, Chechens are other examples in modern times not to mention the tactics of the Chinese in the Korean War. They would charge en masse at the Americans sometimes unarmed so that the Americans would waste their bullets and that those behind the first lines could then prevail. In the people in the South were facing what they saw as an existential threat, they probably would resort to similar tactics. What all these peoples have in common is that they face a desperate situation. Perhaps this is all one needs to look for to find the answer. Perhaps a biologist might also usefully contribute to the explanation having regard to similar behaviors amongst other species (which I understand occur but stand to be corrected).

I do get nervous when explanations are sought in cultural attributes for particular behaviours. Whatever happened to economics, politics, society, geography etc? I always understood these to be the things one usually turns to determine the answers to these sorts of questions. Perhaps this is old fashioned but if one follows Von Ranke’s injunction to tell it “as it happened”, what one looks to in order to do so should not change - even if fashions change.

For anyone interested in Tamil militarism, I would recommend James Heitzman’s study of the Chola state “Gifts of Power”. He looks to the things one usually looks to the explain matters, in this case Chola imperialism, such as the economy of central Tamil Nadu, the structure of the State, effective revenue collection etc with due acknowledgment of (subsidiary) cultural matters. No mention of “suicidal Saivites” at all!

I am not sure therefore that “a review of the cultural ingredients” explains the tactic in question rather than the specific circumstances at hand. I would guess that in all cultures one can find “nihilistic” utterances supporting these kinds of behaviors – you can probably find whatever you are looking for to support any kind of behaviour across the corpus of writings and teachings in any one “culture”.

The other problem with culture IMOH is that it is so slippery and changeable in responding to changing circumstances that it is really very difficult to use it as an explanatory framework. The Chapter “Lazy Japanese and Thieving Germans” in Ha Joon Chang’s “Bad Samaritans” is a good read in this regard showing how the views of the cultural attributes of Japanese and Germans have changed over the last century and a half. The title refers to what people thought of them in the nineteenth century – very different to the way one stereotypes them today. What happened over this period is the kind of societies in which Japanese and Germans live – producing one imagines cultural change as well. We only need to see how the way the view of Tamils has changes in 50 years as the circumstances have changed. They used to be quiet bookish types and now said to be “suicidal Saivites”. Definition of people by referance to culture is really very difficlt, especially over long periods of time.

I would also not write off the UN machinery and its ability to operate quickly when the powers that control it decide to move. Kosovo and Gulf War I are recent examples. There is nothing “miraculous” about this - merely great powers acting when their interests require it. To imagine that Sri Lanka sits outside this machinery and the calculations of the great powers that enliven it is, with great respect, fanciful. I am sure that the policy makers in the GOSL foreign affairs department are quite alive this - and are assessing what sorts of thresholds need to crossed before the UN acts. The latest issue of Foreign Affairs includes a compelling piece by Robert Kagan (someone with whom I do not agree on most things but influential in policy circles in Washington) arguing for the centrality of the Indian Ocean in the twenty first century as a cockpit of great power rivalry rather - than the Pacific or the Atlantic that dominated in the twentieth century. The strategic importance of Sri Lanka is specifically referred to. Lankans may indeed be suprised to learn that they sit in what is probably becoming the centre of things - and not in some peripheral location. All highly relevant I would imagine in assessing the likelihood of strong international action if circumstances dictate it.

Regarding Amrit's comments. I think Roberts is correct in looking at the cultural indicators as well as economic etc. Amrit mentions biologists. Biologists like Richard Dawkins have pointed out hows "nemes" (cultural entities) can act exactly like genes in social situations. Religions are the earliest "political parties", and the religious symbols searched for by Roberts are simply those fingerprints. However, according to another article I read:
Trauma of the Tamil Diaspora, the effect of the extremely violent Tamil TV on the Tamil youth should also be considered. Religion has less and less social influence on the youth who are more and more affected by media and mass communication processes. This is also very true of Tamil Nadu where actors are also politicians. The other factor is the caste systemm. Marx rightly exposed the importance of the "class" system. In Hindu society the "caste system" plays the role of the "caste system", entrenched into a religious framework.

In regard to Amrit's comments, he contends that looking for cultural symbolism is perhaps meaningless since economic and other factors are more determinative. But studying cultural symbolysm is very important. The rise of nazism may have had economic explanations, but the particular cultural turn that it took needs explanation in terms of the Jdeao-Christian anti-Semite cultural setting. So I think Robert's attempts are important. However, he has neglected the importance of movies, TV and other modern media, esp on the Diaspora children and in tamil nadu. Remeber that Jayalalitha and Ramachandran come from the Silver screen as do many others. In this context, the analysis in the Mawbima article entitled
"Trauma of the tamil Diaspora"
www.mawbimanews.com/2009/05/trauma-of-thamil-diaspora-quitting-de.html
seems to have touched on this issue, but mostly from a relatively pro-sinhala point of view. This matter nees to be looked at from a more scholarly standpoint.

Natesan I take your point. Yes - cultural matters are important but the trend of much contemporary scholarship exemplifed by Michael Roberts is to almost eliminate from the anlysis the other things that matter such as economic, social and geographic factors. I am no means suggesting a crude kind of economic determinism - but the kind of cultural determinism that seems to underpin what Michael Roberts is saying seems as misleading as the older kind of economic determinsm. Remebering the origins of the conflict in 50's when the language policies changed, if I understand correctly the question was about access to government jobs, at the time I think a very larger employer.

Re violence in mass media, video games probably are at an extreme end. If that os where the explanation lies, then one would imgaine that American youth will be developing along the same trajectory as the Tamil diaspora through violent Tamil movies. Yet the path of a Tamil suidice bomber and a US teenager are not the same.